A Gift to Expand Minds and Opportunities
Forever grateful for her Dartmouth education, Rebecca Tadikonda has endowed a scholarship so generations of students will have the same educational experience she enjoyed.
Jul 2, 2024
3 minute read
James Bressor
3 minute read
Rebecca Tadikonda ’95 and her husband Madhu Tadikonda recently joined the Evergreen Scholarship Circle, which honors individuals who have given $1 million or more to endow a scholarship at Dartmouth. Rebecca is the mother of two high school students and executive vice president of strategy and innovation at the retirement services company Athene. Here, she reflects on the importance of financial aid in her life and her desire to make Dartmouth possible for students who possess unlimited potential.
I was the recipient of a lot of financial aid, or else Dartmouth wouldn’t have been possible for me. Dartmouth truly changed the trajectory of my life. I had grown up living in poverty—food stamps, moving from place to place as my parents looked for work. There was a lot of financial instability in my life. On top of that, I attended high schools that weren’t very challenging, and not many students went on to selective colleges and universities such as Dartmouth. When I told one of my guidance counselors that I was planning to apply to Dartmouth, he asked why I would do that.
Dartmouth was an incredible educational experience. And I was able to explore career options, including having an internship in a law firm during my junior winter term, which I quickly figured out wasn’t the right path for me. In my senior year, I became interested in consulting firms and ended up joining Bain.
In my first year with Bain, I paid off my student loans and was making more money than my parents had ever made combined. My Dartmouth education had prepared me for that job and my career.
Financial aid remains one of the best paths to take young people with incredible potential and make a transformational difference in their lives. This has a spillover positive effect on their families and their communities.
My family and I came to Hanover for Homecoming in 2023. I attended a lunch with scholarship students, and I had the chance to chat with several students. They’re experiencing what I experienced at Dartmouth. Their minds are expanding and they’re looking forward to career options that wouldn’t exist without the scholarship support they’ve received.
Being able to sit and talk with these students and to hear how scholarships are changing their lives was really inspiring. That’s exactly what I want our donations to do—to help make possible the joy of being somewhere so special and having so much opportunity.